Update December 8, 2025: Puzzles was named the 2025 Hidden Gem awardee at the 2025 Streamer Awards.
For ijustlovepuzzles, humbly known by the Twitch community as the Grandma of Twitch, “G-ma” or simply Puzzles, streaming her love of doing jigsaw puzzles became the first piece of becoming the most recognizable puzzle completionist in the streaming industry.
It was not an easy choice to immediately dive into such a public hobby, as she battled depression after raising her family once she completed the final day of school with her youngest daughter.
“I picked her up and we got home, and it was this big sigh: “I don't have anything that I have to do tomorrow. All of these days are mine now,” said Puzzles. “But just a little while after that, I started to feel like I wasn't needed anymore…and so it's like I no longer had a purpose.”
Puzzles deeply reflected on this in-between period as her “Recliner Story,” wondering if this would be the cycle of the rest of her life.
“I lived there. I ate there. I slept there… I was like, "Okay, I'm just going to die right here in this recliner”,” she said.
However, she soon learned that her life’s puzzle had a greater calling.
In the beginning, her discovery of Twitch began as a pastime that she shared with her family, and through these interactions, she found that she enjoyed being close with the online community, discovering the missing pieces that her own puzzle–and heart–truly needed.
After months of preparation and fighting self-doubt, Puzzles’s own Twitch journey began in January 2021 on her birthday, and with that, she laid the first piece of her puzzle as a streamer.
Her love for doing puzzles began as a young girl with her mom. Puzzles explained how their sessions were a “safety” blanket from the abuse she experienced, and throughout her life the significance of puzzles deepened with her.
“When I read books, it's like I am seeing these different things, but with puzzles…I can travel through the pieces of the puzzle. With every piece of the puzzle, it is like another step towards this place,” Puzzles said.
In the last five years, she amassed over 33,000 followers on the platform and was named a Twitch Partner in October 2022. Puzzles also received recognition from her peers like Viola Davis, Kai Cenat and Will Neff, but some of her earliest support came from the Black Twitch community, despite some netizens taking jabs at her accomplishments.
“Somebody was talking to their community before they came over to raid me and said that Will Neff platformed me, and I was hurt by that,” Puzzles explained. “I love Will Neff and Caroline Kwan… like I love my own family.”
“But, I had already been on the front page… I wasn't known to this community and to some of these bigger streamers, but Berleezy had already called me the grandma of Twitch.”
She explained how more black creators, like Krystalogy and StorymodeBae, showed her a “kind love and warmth” through supportive words, raids and simply with their presence that you only feel when in your community or attending your black family reunion.
With the help of Neff and many of these creators, Puzzles would place one of her life’s biggest puzzle pieces: a nomination at the Streamer Awards.
Overcome with emotions, Puzzles described the feeling of being nominated in the Hidden Gem category as a moment that was so much bigger than puzzles or just streaming.
For the first time she felt seen.
“It is everything that I have been through in life. All of the horrific abuses. It was never being protected as a little girl…and just really feeling like trash, not feeling worthy and all of the depression and all of the medicines that I was on,” Puzzles said.
“To get here and to be loved by people who have never even touched me, who have never hugged me, who have never been in the same room [as me], but to feel loved in that way. Yes, it's an award, but it's like that weight has finally been lifted.”
With this nomination, a documentary and a thriving community, Puzzles looked ahead to the next five years of her streaming career with excitement as she wants to continue expanding her brand, especially in the puzzle industry which she described as the most challenging to break into.
After attending the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association event for multiple years, Puzzles made many connections, but no significant opportunities materialized. Despite this, she said she plans to continue to leave her options open for future opportunities and will focus on expanding her puzzle services.
Just as her jigsaw adventures became a tool to take her on magical adventures, Puzzles described her cardboard creations as a way to connect more deeply with her community that she loves endlessly, just like her own family and hopes to leave a lasting impression on them.
She’s making an impact and piecing together a lane of her own. One puzzle at a time.
.png)